PILOT PROJECTS
One of the best ways of assessing how reliable, cost beneficial and useful cloud instances can be is through pilot projects. Ideally, the pilot testing should be done with a application that is not critical, has a limited scope and ROI estimates that are not concrete. Learning how to use the cloud is also a major benefit of a pilot project.
VARIABLE WORKLOADS
A lot of applications do not have high computing requirements at all times. However, when it comes to investment in IT resources, the maximum workload is always taken into account. This causes resources to stay idle most of the time. With cloud flexibility, organizations can now concentrate on engaging physical IT resources for normal requirements. In situations where workloads peak, cloud instances can be used to cater to those high computing needs, with the option to release the cloud resources once the workloads have normalized.
NON-ESSENTIAL TASKS
Moving applications that are low risk and information that may be processed on virtual instances automatically frees up resources for the rest of the organization. That means that only applications and information that is mission critical and have high resource requirements need to stay on physical machines within the organization’s own IT setup.
DATA MINING
Sifting through mountains of data and making sense out of it requires substantial IT resources. If an organization decides to manage the IT resources in-house, a lot of investment in equipment and facilities to operate such equipment is needed. Cloud adoption can save such investment by allowing setting up and use of cloud machines only when required.
DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING
When performing development and testing tasks in-house, developers need to have the same level of development tools on their machines as are planned to be used in actual production. Testers on the other hand, create live scenarios to test software from end to end. All of this requires significant capital expenditure on part of the organization. Cloud computing ensures that all developers and testers are able to use the same tools, which are controlled and upgraded centrally. It also allows use of computing resources as and when needed.
